


but what good is a quick healing to go?

by 2ndtolastrow



Series: Yj soulmate au [2]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen, Implied/Refrenced Physical Abuse, Lawrence Crock’s A+ Parenting, Platonic Slowburn, Something like a Character Study, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Touch-Starved Artemis Crock, but like. so ‘pre’ they don’t exchange direct dialogue until ch 7, can be read as a standalone, for like. artemis/everyone, intimacy issues, mentioned jade nguyen, minor af chesh/roy and super/martian, pre-spitfire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:00:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 9,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26533996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ndtolastrow/pseuds/2ndtolastrow
Summary: Winter in Gotham comes early with a deep and bone-biting cold that sometimes means snow has already started falling on Halloween and lasts long, until it’s gray and brown slush and muck under the smog-filled sky in February. You need gloves to survive it.The spring after Jade leaves, Artemis never takes hers off.
Relationships: Artemis Crock & Dick Grayson, Artemis Crock & Dinah Lance, Artemis Crock & Jade Nguyen, Artemis Crock & Kaldur'ahm, Artemis Crock & Paula Crock
Series: Yj soulmate au [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1935712
Comments: 28
Kudos: 51





	1. lock the door behind you when you go

**Author's Note:**

> So I reread my other yj soulmate fic recently and, well, I realized I had kinda started something with Artemis there that I didn't finish. 
> 
> Re: the abuse warnings: Artemis is kind of waiting for her dad to lose his temper in the first section (which he doesn’t). She references having to hide bruises and being scared of possibly setting her mother off.
> 
> (I don’t hc Paula as being/having been an abusive parent, but I do think that Artemis is extremely uncertain of where they stand following her mother’s return from prison, and was young enough when she was arrested that she doubts her own memories.)
> 
> Title taken from “Carolina Heat” by You, Me, and Everyone We Know (“Because I'll be the preacher to all his converts/"Donate now to my rightful cause"/But what good is a quick healing to go?/If the lesson is never learned it's just like stitches for show”)

Winter in Gotham comes early, with a deep and bone-biting cold that sometimes means snow has already started falling on Halloween, and stays long past its due, until it’s gray and brown slush and muck under the smog-filled sky in February. You need gloves to survive it.

The spring after Jade leaves, Artemis never takes hers off.

It’s excusable, at first. P.S. 127 is a public school on the seedy side of Gotham. (Well, ‘seedy’ is a nice word for it, being Gotham.) The best they can do is a fan in September and one in June, when the days turn hot and humid, filled with the stench of pollution rising off the bay. Artemis keeping her gloves on in the drafty chill of the classroom is barely any more than the half the class still wearing their coats.

It’s late March, when her dad comes in with heavier footsteps than usual and she freezes but tries not to tense because that would just make him notice. 

He says, “Got a call from your _‘guidance counselor’_ today.”

“Guidance counselor” is mocking and slow. He doesn’t believe in things like that. 

Artemis keeps her head down. She looks at the cotton of her glove, at the pencil she’s still holding. There’s probably a black mark on the worksheet by now. Mr. Harris had called her into his office yesterday. She thought she’d brushed him off properly.

He scoffs. “What an idiot.”

Footsteps. He’s coming closer.

Artemis swallows. “Yeah,” she croaks out. If she stays too quiet he’ll think—

 _Thud._ Objects slide across the table in front of her. He’d thrown them. The slide of cloth on wood, the skid of plastic, and then they’ve stopped.

He sets a large, heavy hand on her shoulder and squeezes. Too quick, not quick enough. 

“You got it right, baby girl,” he says, and her lungs collapse in relief. “You’re strong. You don’t need anyone else.”

And then her dad is gone, footsteps thudding away.

She picks one of them up. It’s a pair of gloves. Dark grey, thinner than the ones she’s wearing, with thin pads of rubber on the palms and fingertips. Her size.

She pulls off the winter gloves, bright blue and too warm and honestly pretty gross at this point, with a hole forming on the left index finger. Wipes her hands on her jeans. 

Slides on the first pair.

Jade’s mark on Artemis is centered on her right shoulder, a pulsing tangle of green-purple-gray smoke so dark it’d be easy to mistake for black. It spreads out down her arm and across her chest-back-shoulder, thankfully not coming up on her neck.

It’s been that way since she can remember.

She never got a choice about it.

Her mom doesn’t get it, when she comes back.

Her dad didn’t get it either, because he thought she was _strong,_ that she didn’t _want._ She just couldn’t take the idea of being offered fate and then hearing “it’s every girl for herself” again. Easier to reject than be rejected.

But, where Dad gave her gloves and bought long-sleeved shirts thin enough to stand up to Gotham summers (but not so thin as to let bruises show through), Mom says, “Artemis,” as she passes their table in a way that makes her shove her hands into her pockets guiltily, a sick knot balling up in her stomach.

“I just want what’s best for you,” she says. Her eyes used to be sharper, before. The angles have gentled, now, but not the power. Artemis refuses to look back at her, because she can’t meet that gaze.

Instead, she grinds out, “I get that,” through gritted teeth, staring at the doorway, the little notches from various ‘accidents’.

“Do you?” Her wheels squeak as she comes closer, and Artemis closes her eyes, bracing herself. She’s not getting out of this.

“Yeah,” she says, turning around. She doesn’t say anything else, because it might end up being to the tune of _this is your fault, anyway,_ and she isn’t sure her mom’s ‘reformation’ would hold up to that kind of disrespect.

(She doesn’t remember what her mom did, before, but she doesn’t want to risk—)

She doesn’t meet her eyes.

“Artemis,” her mom says, sharply. “Look at me.”

She does.

She looks sad. Not angry, just… 

“I want you to have a better life than I did. And I know what a life spent running looks like.” She sweeps a hand out at the room. “You don’t want that.”

Later, Artemis will call it standing her ground, will say she’s not letting fate tug her along. Right now, she grimaces and shoves her hands deeper in her pockets and says, “I’m gonna be late for work.”

Her mom gives her a long stare, before she sighs and waves a hand. “Go on.”

Artemis is out the door fast enough to pretend she didn’t hear the ‘I love you’ called at her retreating back.

Artemis is half-hopeful that this night will just end, after Red fucking Speedy creeping around at the zeta, so she can go to the fuck to sleep.

It’s one a.m., but her mother is waiting when Artemis crawls through the window and drops her bow to the ground. She has the good mugs out, and there’s something hopeful in her gaze that doesn’t quite process the slump of Artemis’s shoulders and the way she rocks back at the sight of her.

“How was it?” she asks, and Artemis’s shoulder _aches._

_Jade’s definitely alive, and she’s trying to kill me too now. I think that Speedy—not Speedy anymore, by the way, is kind of losing it. I met at least two of my soulmates, not that they’ve got a clue. I really want them to like me—except maybe Kid Flash—which sucks because I’m pretty sure all of them will hate me when they find out what I did tonight and—_

“That bad?” her mom says gently, and if she were the kind of person to break down into tears, this would be when Artemis does.

She isn’t, so she takes a deep breath and pulls her hands into fists, feels the gloves settle around them.

“No,” she says, putting on her best smile. “It was kind of cool, actually. We fought nanobots.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, like I kinda said at the start, this fic was started by re-reading “leave a piece of yourself right here (remind me that you came)” and like. Remind me!Will is basically canon!Will, and it’s an exploration of his Awkward But Trying energy. Quick healing!artemis, on the other hand, isn’t canon!Artemis, and this was meant to be a one-shot character study of that. And then I hit the end of this and I went “ok this isn’t done, I’ll make it a two-shot,” and now I have five chapters done and no end in sight.
> 
> So.
> 
> But I really hope y’all are enjoying yourselves, and feel absolutely free to leave comment/kudos or come chat with me on tumblr @secondtolastrow. (Esp if you’d like to talk meta! I have thoughts I haven’t quite been able to incorporate just yet that I’d love to share, and I’d love to hear your thoughts!)


	2. all in your head

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Actually, Kaldur is totally Artemis’s favorite. They’re bros.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bereft. Cw for canon injuries

For all her weird obsession with getting Artemis to lose her layers (her armor, her last line of defense), her mom is polite enough not to gloat when they get the Gotham Academy uniform.

Possibly because she’s too busy grimacing over the cost of it, but still.

Artemis stares at it and wonders who it is that gets off on making a bunch of teenage girls wear skirts that short, and why the hell it is they have to work at the school that gave her a scholarship.

She’s read the dress code already, too, and non-uniform items are prohibited, and they’ve got fucking uniform gloves she and her mom can’t afford, and she wouldn’t try and grab them even if they could because of the way her mom would look at her. 

Guess it’ll be a winter of numb fingers and a school year of scowling at anyone who tries to touch her. Maybe she can stitch real pockets into the stupid blazer.

Which, well, given that she _knows_ which mark is M’gann’s after the mind-link incident, Aqualad has his _tattooed on_ and she’d seen more than a few matches beyond that on Kid Flash after he’d crashed into the room bare-chested that first night, she doesn’t exactly expect to meet anyone at Gotham Academy. But the idea of it leaves her tense and angry and she would prefer to just go with it than examining anything, thanks.

It takes Black Canary only seconds to spot how stiff she is when they’re starting in on spars.

“Artemis!” she calls across the floor. “You need to loosen up.”

“Sorry,” Artemis grunts, ducking down under Aqualad’s fist. “Little bit of a reason, here.”

It’s not a great answer, and she doesn’t stop feeling Canary’s eyes on her until she forces him back several paces so she can get the space to center herself. But it isn’t her who brings it up after.

“Canary was correct,” Aqualad says quietly, after she’s helped him up off the floor and they’re making their way towards the edge of the sparring floor. “Is everything alright?”

“Fine,” Artemis says shortly. Her fingers itch for her bow, for the familiar cloth of her non-uniform gloves.

He looks at her so doubtfully that she wants to scream, to tell him that the marks mean nothing at all so he can just—except, of course, for the part where he has no idea.

Finally, he nods and looks away, those shallow-sea eyes focusing on where Robin is neatly avoiding being smashed into the ground by Superboy’s fists. (She wonders if that’s the color his mark fills in, or if it’s black as his tattoos.)

Her hands clench into fists, and she lets the feeling of _these_ gloves settle her safe.

Aqualad has no idea. He’s just being—

“Aqualad!” she gasps alongside the others, mind-link collapsing around them.

“Where is he? What happened next?” asks—

Robin laughs. “Dude, you have to think to fight.”

Superboy scowls as they leave the ring. “I think.”

“Sure,” Robin says, cuing intervention from—

Miss Martian shakes her head, worry coating her voice as she admits, “I don’t know. That’s the last thing I—we remember.”

Artemis glances down, and realizes her hand is still tangled with—

Wally skids up and bounces on his toes. “And the next round is—“

Artemis shakes herself out of her head as she yanks her hand free. Wally gives a similar shake, bringing his hand to rub at his neck with a noise of disgust that, trust her, she returns.

He sounds awkward and off-balance when he continues. “I-uh-we landed 24 hours ago. If Kaldur's been wandering the desert that long, well, that's not good for a guy with gills.”

“Now that I know to look for him…” Robin mutters, instantly pulling up his hologlove. “He’s close, but he’s not moving.”

Artemis focuses on the mission, and on ~~her~~ their hopefully not-dead ~~soulmate~~ leader, and ignores the thing that had just happened.

She’s honestly too pissed at M’gann for leaving them in the desert to go grab Superboy (when he’s Kryptonian and Kaldur was a half-dead Atlantean and _priorities,_ much?) to ask about it.

But she does find herself watching as M’gann lets herself sink into the bond between herself and Kaldur, hand unconsciously pressed against her side, against the mark that had burned the first time she let Artemis in with a half-made bond.

So she does know telepathy and soulmate bonds mix weird. 

She sits back with Kaldur on the way ~~home~~ to the mountain, keeping one gloved hand on his shoulder to make sure he isn’t jostled on the way. 

The freaky tingling feeling in her palm might have something to do with the potential barely kept down, but she’s pretty sure it has more to do with the part where she hasn’t touched someone except to hit them for far too long. Except Wally.

The tingling along her spine, right where his eel lies, is a bit harder to brush off.

They go home. They give their report. Batman glares at all of them for disappearing into the desert for more than a day.

Artemis goes home. Her mom gasps about how she was worried sick. She passes out and dreams of Mars’s frozen surface and red dust storms. 

Two days later, Jade ends up in the news for trying to destroy a peace summit.

Artemis stops breathing.

Her mom hums, clicks her tongue at on-screen Jade and her rocket launcher. 

“Too flashy,” she says, and Artemis chokes.

“What?” she says, turning with a smile on her face. “Just because I’m not in the game anymore—Artemis, are you alright?”

Artemis takes a shallow breath. Lets it out. Tries again. The smoke in her lungs, getting thicker and thicker, goes nowhere at all. “Mom—Mom, that’s _Cheshire._ ”

The concern in her mother’s eyes deepens, her eyebrows closing in. “They already said her—“

She freezes.

She turns back towards the screen slowly, eyes widening as the clip of Jade finishes again. 

“No,” she gasps, and Artemis closes her eyes, bracing for the inevitable.

“My little girl,” her mom whispers, voice breaking, and Artemis’s shoulder pulses.


	3. you and me and the phone booth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dick Grayson, you little shit

The first day of school is not one Artemis looked forward to when she actually knew the people she went to school with. Today, she knows a sum total of no one. (And her skirt is too short and she has clearly messed the tie up and she doesn’t have her fucking gloves and she really hates her mom for guilt-tripping her into this.)

A blonde girl splits off from the pack, approaching with a smile. “Artemis? I’m Bette, your new student liaison. Welcome to Gotham Academy.”

“Thanks,” she says, doing her best to smile back and also avoid Bette’s handshake without making it weird. “Um, I’m Artemis—but you already knew that.” 

Luckily, she steps back gracefully—only for the space to be filled by some kid who’s never heard of personal space.

“Hi! Dick Grayson, nice to meet you,” he declares, then grabs her hand to pump it up and down and sends the world crashing apart.

Everything goes white and Artemis feels _hope-anger-righteousness-joy-anger-grief-happiness_ smash through her and she opens her eyes on her knees, hand still tightly gripping the kid’s. She stares at him, both of them panting lightly, and he stares right back, a smile stretching over his face that looks all too familiar.

“ _Really_ nice to meet you,” he says, and she rips her hand loose because nope, she isn’t dealing with this, she isn’t going to have some fucking rich kid who’s going to come and go as he pleases.

She pulls herself up, brushing at her skinned knees (and really, fuck the people who ran this school for not letting her wear pants) and scowls at him. “No.”

Thankfully, the bell rings, and Artemis has an opportunity to get the hell away from him.

“Dick Grayson, huh?” Bette asks, casually directing her left instead of the right she’d gone to take.

“I would really rather not,” Artemis replies. (She can feel the feathers on her upper thigh aching, fresh-burnt, and she’d half-hoped, half-hated the idea those might be—)

“Got it,” Bette says, and nods her head towards one of the open doors. “Your first class is English, right in here.”

Artemis misses most of it (which is why you can usually use bonding as a way into the nurse’s office, but fuck if she’s going to admit anything). She gets through her other five classes without spending too much time thinking about the rush of _bonding_ with Dick Grayson and she goes home and lies flatly to her mother about it having been great, and her mom thinks she’s putting on a brave face and doesn’t question the fact that Artemis is clearly lying, and it’s fine.

(She gets into her room and grabs her gloves off her desk and pulls them on and curls up on the wrong bed and stays there until she can breathe again.)

It’s nearly five thirty when Artemis remembers that they’re training today at the mountain, and gets up to grab her costume. (She pulls off her skirt and freezes, staring at the stoplight-bright red-green-yellow feathers on her thigh. Robin’s colors.) Thankfully, she’s not late when she arrives at the zeta, but she is met by Robin… who’s never been _here_ before.

“Hey,” he says, leaning against the out-of-order sign, grinning at her like—

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Artemis groans, tipping her head back because she can afford a little dramatic right now.

“Not so much,” he replies, standing up properly. “Don’t tell the big man I told you, okay? He’s pretty protective of our IDs.”

Artemis looks back at him, letting her eyebrows rise, something cold and sinking in her stomach because this is Batman they're talking about, scourge of the night, all-seeing shadow, world’s greatest detective. “You knew, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Robin says casually, and she hates him. “I totally wasn’t expecting the soulmate thing though.”

Which. “I _meant_ the soulmate thing. What did you…” She can’t bring herself to finish because she didn't want them to know and Batman had agreed and she had trusted—

“Uh, your name. Your parents.” He shrugs, playing it off like it isn’t— “Hey, detective, remember?”

“Dick,” she hisses back.

“It never mattered,” he says, insistent. “It still doesn’t.”

Artemis gives him a wary stare in reply, and decides she’s still going to spend the next week, at least, cold-shouldering him. “Let’s just go.”

“Hey—“ he draws back with an over-the-top bow, “Ladies first.”

(Near-death experiences aside, she totally does.)

(But…)

“Something has happened between you and Robin,” Kaldur states quietly.

Artemis slams the fridge door shut, surprised. She hadn’t heard him come in and she’s supposed to be better than this and— No. It’s Kaldur.

She eyes him warily, waiting for her body to relax.

He meets her gaze easily. “I do not need to know what it is, but it _is_ affecting your performance as a part of this team, and that is not acceptable.” After a beat, he softens. “If you do wish to—“

“ _No._ ” Artemis hadn’t meant it to come out so vehemently, but she can’t— There’s no way she could take that offer.

“I only wish to help you, Artemis.” He pauses. “We _all_ wish to help you.”

“I don't need any help,” Artemis bites out, because [ _you’re strong, you don’t need anyone else_ ] has been beaten into her and she doesn’t need _him_ either and she walks out fast enough he might think it’s “storming out” and not “fleeing the room.”

“So, I totally get the not talking to me thing and I completely accept that—“

“Then why are you here?”

“To give you these.”

“…”

“I figured you didn’t have any, or you’d have been wearing them before, and it’s, like, not astrous not talking to you, but I still—“

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

(Artemis keeps the Gotham Academy gloves in her locker. It makes her mom happy to think she’s exposing herself to a bunch of people around her age without every possible inch of skin covered, so she’ll let her think that.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bruce: so i got a call saying you were at the nurse?  
> Dick: yeah  
> Bruce: because you met your soulmate?  
> Dick: yeah!  
> Bruce: you wanna talk about it?????  
> dick: no  
> Bruce:  
> Bruce: what?????????


	4. they tell you to expect broken ribs, that it means you’re doing it right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So the Martian afterlife? Kinda sucks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up! This chapter starts from the end of Failsafe!
> 
> Cw: past temporary character death, flashbacks*, accidental self-injury, characters not respecting touch consent, implied past physical abuse
> 
> *ish, it’s a telepathy shenanigan that’s functionally close enough to warn for

They make it out of their missions with bumps and bruises (and one, single broken arm). That’s how it works. Superboy’s shirts go through worse than they do every time. 

Until they don’t.

She gasps awake from the black (and death _burns_ , hot as a star and empty as the vacuum of space, and she knows that now because _M’gann_ believes it) to metal hard underneath her as she jolts away from it, nearly seizing.

Hands press against her shoulders, holding her down, and she yanks at them, struggling to get them off.

“Don’t touch me!”

“Artemis,” he says, unfeeling, unmoving. “Please desist—“

“Get _away!_ ” Her voice cracks and she can’t breathe but she goes limp for a half-second and then jerks upward but the only thing that gives is her and it has her actually falling back this time.

“Get off her!” someone yells, and _that’s not Jade_ and Artemis chokes on the sudden realization she hadn’t been here as much as she had been and freezes, trying to get her bearings.

She takes a deep, shuddering breath as Wally lunges to pull Red Tornado off of her and he’s alive? 

Artemis slides backward, trying to process The Cave full of Justice Leaguers because they _died_. She died. 

[ _M’gann screams **Artemis!** and the Black burns, hot and empty against her soul_]

“You're all alive!” M’gann cries, outloud and echoing across the mind-link. Artemis feels her relief washing over them, subsuming the fear still barely underneath her skin.

She looks for Wally and finds him leaning against the wall, watching them with wide eyes. He looks to her, like he’d felt her gaze, and she tips her head at Red Tornado and flashes him a grateful smile.

He nods, and Robin says, “Exercise?” 

His disbelief echoes out of him with less force than M’gann’s emotions, and she doesn’t understand.

“Try to remember,” Batman says, low and heavy. “What you experienced was a training exercise.”

He and Manhunter keep explaining and she can almost remember the feeling of laying down, of letting his unfamiliar presence into her mind, and then he says, “But all that changed when Artemis died.” 

[ _M’gann screams **Artemis!** and the Black burns, hot and empty against her soul_]

That was the tipping point. 

“This isn't her fault! Why didn't you stop the exercise?” Conner demands, anger and protectiveness flowing off of him in waves.

“We tried,” Manhunter says forcefully. “But M'gann had a death grip on the scenario. The high amount of soulbonds between the team helped to create a secondary telepathic web supporting her power, and so I had to enter the scenario to attempt to shock her out of it.”

Artemis’s side hurts and she says, “You haven’t.”

The room turns to her and she taps the side of her head and thinks, _Everybody online?_ in her loudest voice.

“Oh!” M’gann gasps as the rest of the team wince. “Hello, Megan! My mind must be…”

A moment later, the hum of the others’ minds shuts off and—[ _the Black burns, hot and empty against her soul_ ]—it’s comforting, having her mind to herself again. She doesn’t need anybody else in there.

“We were still linked up,” M’gann explains, turning to Manhunter. “She didn’t mean unconscious.”

He frowns. “That would explain your distressed reactions upon awakening—such intense telepathic contact can cause… emotional feedback.”

Conner grunts tiredly, crossing his arms over his chest.

“The end of the exercise…” he trails off as M’gann begins to sob, and Artemis shoves herself farther away from the group, trying to tune out the rest of the world.

She breathes in, taking stock of herself. Her shoulders and upper chest are starting to ache where she had shoved herself against Red Tornado, and she knows there are going to be nasty bruises tomorrow. Her side and her upper thigh are aching—M’gann and Dick’s marks. She eyes where Conner has her wrapped against his chest and decides against interfering in that.

The rest of her marks—Kaldur’s, Conner’s, and Wally’s tingle. Red Arrow’s, Jade’s, and the ones she hasn’t placed yet don’t. Even more fun with telepathy, apparently.

“Artemis.”

She twists to look at Black Canary. 

Her smile is gentle enough to grate at Artemis’s nerves. “If you want to stay and talk, you’re welcome to, and I’m willing to listen.”

“I can go?” Artemis asks, already starting to stand.

“Whoa!” Canary reaches out a hand as she stumbles on her feet, flinching away at the last second as Artemis catches herself on the edge of the table. “If you feel up to it.”

Her tone makes it clear that Artemis doesn’t _look_ up to it, but she doesn’t care, she’s getting _away_ from all this. So she jerks a nod at Canary and heads for the zeta tube.

The shade of smog in the sky when she stumbles out of the zeta to Gotham says mid-afternoon. She slams the door of the false phone booth shut behind her and leans back on it, breathing in.

Her mind is quiet. Her gloves are on. There’s no one here. (Her shoulders ache.)

It’s only mid-afternoon. She died. Everyone died because—[ _M’gann screams **Artemis!** and the Black burns, hot and empty against her soul_]—M’gann lost control at the sight of her death.

Her mind is quiet. 

She curls her hands into fists to feel the tightening of the gloves around her knuckles, and heads home.

Her mom doesn’t ask any questions when Artemis comes in and only barely replies as she walks through, distracted with an attempt to make their (terrifyingly inaccessible) stove work for her from her wheelchair. (Another day, Artemis would’ve intervened, or her mother would’ve seen the look on her face or heard the tone of her voice and intervened, or _something_.)

She goes into her room and pulls off her jacket, and then her shirt, and stares at the blossoming bruises on the top of her chest.

Fucking telepathy.

What did her mom think Artemis was—

_It’s just a training exercise. I’ll be back after lunch, but before dinner._

—doing? Right. She should shower, or something. Less questions asked if she thinks it was just a workout.

She looks down at her hands, at the gloves that are exactly the opposite of a second skin. She needs to take them off to shower. Her mind is quiet. She can’t—

Her mind is quiet. She’s fine. None of the team know that she’s been lying to them this whole time, and none of them are running and—[ _M’gann screams **Artemis!** and the Black burns, hot and empty against her soul_]—she can take her damn gloves off.


	5. one step forward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinah just keeps yelling about going to therapy, doesn’t she Artemis? Maybe you should go to fucking therapy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disordered time! I’ve changed things a little bit (with further details in the end notes) for the sake of this Artemis’s character. Also…
> 
> Cw: past abuse, self-injury through neglect (ish)
> 
> I would also like to emphasize that you really, really shouldn't work out in a way that will exacerbate an injury. Really.

They open the mind-link back up the next day they meet. It’s muted, hesitant, and Artemis doesn’t know how to feel about the fact that she can feel her shoulders loosen at the contact.

None of them are ‘present’ during training, enough that Canary gives up and dismisses them with a worried stare after only half an hour. Frustrating, because Artemis had kind of wanted to hit something, and she was just getting to the point where she could ignore the pain in her shoulders and chest.

The next day, they’re too distracted for paper exercises. The rest of the week, no one even bothers to try, and they end up settling into dismal silences. 

It’s still better than Wally’s jokes.

Finally, the League decides to sic Black Canary on them.

Conner storms out.

“And we're off to a brilliant start,” Wally mocks, rolling his eyes. “I don’t even get why they think I need this.”

But before she can reply with something appropriately cutting, she’s being called in.

Ugh. That makes it sound like the principal’s office.

She settles into the green chair as quickly as she can, and gets her game face on because—[ _M’gann screams **Artemis!** and the Black burns, hot and empty against her soul_]— “Look, me dying during the exercise might have started things going south but I was coma-girl. Missed out on all the fun of forgetting it wasn't real. So no trauma. No need for the shrinkwrap.”

Canary gives her a disbelieving stare, “You're too tough to need help.” 

Artemis looks away, avoiding the eye contact, and brings her legs in front of her as a shield. “Whatever. Maybe.”

“Or maybe too tough to admit you need help.” She leans forward, elbows on her knees. “Artemis, it's not a sign of weakness to open up to your friends.”

Artemis stiffens. Her hands clench into fists because if this is going where she thinks it’s going, it had better _not_. “I know that.”

“But you still keep secrets from them,” Canary says, like she knows the half of it.

“Everybody keeps secrets.” She curls tighter.

“I’m not going to force you into anything, Artemis, but I do think you might want to start being honest with them.” She’s leaning forward, elbows on her knees, trying to _connect_.

Artemis doesn’t reply.

Canary sits back. “Okay,” she says, slow and measuring. “We’re clearly not getting anywhere with that. Do you want to talk about what happened when you woke up?”

She’s starting to get why Conner stormed out.

“I don’t like to be touched,” she grinds out. 

Canary ends up insisting that Artemis let someone (who’s probably going to be her, honestly) check her out in the infirmary, because slamming yourself full-force against an android made of carbon fiber and steel is unlikely to end well for your body. (As though Artemis doesn’t know what a fractured collarbone feels like and wouldn’t be able to recognize a severe injury.)

She also spent the whole session recommending that Artemis try to remove the literal and metaphorical barriers between her and the rest of the team, which Artemis is… not ready for, and unwilling to admit to being scared of. [ _you’re strong, you don’t need anybody else_ ]

At least to anyone who might repeat it to, for example, her boyfriend who happens to be in charge of mentoring Artemis as a hero. Or something like that. 

But she walks out, and heads up into the archery range she’d set up after her second week here, and does her best to ignore the gentle hum of Kaldur’s mind picking up enough that she knows he’s in with Canary. 

She grabs an arm guard and switches out one glove for an old tab that she’s had since her first bow, even though it was too big for her hand back then. Then she takes her bow and quiver and stands at the back of the room and shoots. Basic shots, and not a single one goes anywhere other than where she wants it to, rote motions that make her shoulders ache but she has to keep going because weakness is unacceptable, and [ _work through it, baby girl_ ].

And again.

And again.

And again.

It’s late when she’s finally interrupted.

“You know, usually the response to ‘you’ve probably injured your shoulders’ isn’t _archery_.”

Artemis looses the arrow she’d already had drawn, and lowers her bow. “I’m an archer.”

Canary is leaning on the doorway, arms crossed over her chest, and she doesn’t look impressed by the reasoning. “Uh-huh.”

Artemis rolls her shoulders, and ignores the new twinges in them as she sets her bow down.

Canary’s lips tighten, and she tilts her head. “You can clean up later. Let’s go.”

In a weird way, it’s kind of reassuring to have clearly pissed her off at some point in this exchange. Anger, she knows how to deal with. Repeated gentle insistences that it’s okay to ask for help? Not so much.

So Artemis grabs her glove and follows Canary down the halls to the infirmary, bracing herself for the part where the anger comes out. 

But Canary doesn’t say anything during the walk, or when she’s opening the door to the infirmary—it’s one of the few places with a door, much less one with anything more high tech than a doorknob going on, and the hand scan recognizes Leaguers and Team both. She leads the way in, and then nods to the closest bed. “Sit.”

Artemis pushes herself up onto the bed, half-surprised it doesn’t rock under her unbalanced weight like the fold-out cots her dad preferred would have. The motion sends a hot wave of pain up through her shoulders, and she grits her teeth against it.

Canary sees it. One eyebrow raises as though to say ‘Fine. _Right._ ’ “Artemis, it isn’t—“

“A sign of weakness to need help.” Artemis scowls at her. “I get it.”

“True.” Canary crosses her arms with a smirk. “But not what I was going to say. I was _going_ to tell you that it isn’t a good idea to put yourself in unnecessary pain. Now get your shirt off so I can take a look at those shoulders.”

Artemis freezes. Jade’s mark pulses violently under her skin. She can’t—she didn’t consider—she _can’t_ —

“Hey.” Canary’s voice cuts in and Artemis knows her panic was written across her face. “Artemis, talk to me.”

“I don’t—“ Artemis drags in a ragged breath, clenching her fists to feel the tightening of her gloves. “—I don’t like to be touched.”

“Okay,” Canary says. She’s spread her stance, hands open at her sides, trying to make herself look less threatening. “Is it me seeing you that’s the problem, or me touching you?”

“Both?” Artemis offers weakly, hating the emotion in her own voice. “It’s the skin-on-skin part.”

Canary grimaces slightly, eyes flicking down to Artemis’s own, ever-present gloves. There’s a hint of guilt to the expression, and Artemis knows she thinks she should’ve put it together before, but it’s good that she didn’t. [ _you’re strong, you don’t need anybody else_ ]

“If I grab a pair of gloves, will that help?” she asks, and her voice isn’t just the normal measured, it’s _careful_ , and Artemis hates that too.

She nods. “Just, don’t mention—“ She taps her right shoulder, and Canary raises an eyebrow again, but nods warily, before turning away to grab a pair of thin, latex gloves from a nearby cabinet.

Artemis strips off her arm guard, jacket, and shirt as fast as she can while Canary is turned away, forcing herself not to flinch or hiss at the new pain the movement brings. When she lowers her arms, shirt off, Canary has turned back around, and is watching with a grimace.

“Okay,” she says gently, holding her hands up to show the gloves on them, “you ready?”

Artemis sets her jaw, and nods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, main changes to the therapy’s session are  
> A) dropping the “most concerned about Wally” bit because _honestly_. The heterosexual nonsense.  
> B) this ‘verse’s Artemis is a bit less reactive than canon Artemis, for a couple reasons. 1) Canary doesn’t know everything she’s keeping from the team. 2) Her trust issues are more intense. 3) She’s done some avoiding of probing questions from Concerned Adults about her ‘not opening up’ in this au (mr Harris was not the last guidance counselor to get a teacher going ‘uh, hey, i don’t think that one’s ok?’ in his direction)


	6. two steps back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thing about opening yourself up is that it means making yourself vulnerable. And Artemis? She kind of sucks at that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Secrets and Misplaced!  
> Cw: canonical minor character death, contemplation of death/loss  
> Also: ollie: *is canonically artemis’s mentor*  
> Me, shoving him out of the way to grab Dinah: :)  
> Ollie, not really appearing in this fic: :(

Dinah doesn’t hesitate, but she does telegraph her movements, and say what she’s about to do before she does it.

They’re like checkpoints—I’m going to put my hand on your shoulder blade now. I’m going to press on the bruise; tell me when it hurts—and Artemis tries to brace herself for every touch because she’s feeling _too much_.

And it isn’t—it’s not all bad. There’s the element of fear that comes with the press of skin on not-quite-skin, and the pain because her shoulders fucking _hurt_ and Dinah isn’t exactly treating her with proverbial kid gloves, but…

Her hands are warm, and their thick calluses feel as familiar as the ones on her mother’s hands, or her father's. She’s certainly gentler than Lawrence Crock ever was with her injuries. As much as Artemis is weirdly stiff because she’s trying not to flinch from the pain, and she damn well hopes that Dinah can’t pick up on the rest of it, because the rest of it is _wanting_.

She kind of really, really wants to just collapse into a puddle and let this keep happening for the rest of her life.

Canary lets her off with some advice about a hot shower and icing, and a firm ban on archery outside of missions for the time being that Artemis _knows_ she’ll mention to Oliver.

Zatanna, on the other hand, has no clue, and therefore no reason to keep her from using her bow when they go on patrol instead of to Happy Harbor High’s Halloween Dance (and, ugh, who let that much alliteration _exist_ ). It turns out to be a lucky thing, too, when they run into Harm the Insane.

The rotting, black streaks on his face are golden spirals of sand in the old photo of him with Greta, but it’s not until she sees the grave that Artemis can admit she knows what he did. 

“I still can’t believe someone would do that,” she murmurs, half to herself. “If my…” She stops that train of thought right there. Jade might want her dead and gone, but the idea of her actually doing the job herself isn’t one Artemis wants to think about. Besides, Zatanna’s right there.

“Your what?” There’s a hand on her shoulder, a tingling rush at the contact, even through several layers of clothing. “Artemis, talk to me. Secrets don’t stay buried, obviously. It’s better to bring them into the light.”

And Artemis takes a moment to debate it, closes her eyes just to _imagine_ telling the truth. 

She shakes Zatanna’s hand off. “I don’t have any secrets.”

Her mom isn’t up when she gets home, and Artemis doesn’t exactly _believe_ in anyone, but she mutters her thanks to any that might be listening. 

She doesn’t sleep well that night, for all her body is exhausted. Her shoulders hurt, but her right shoulder _hurts_ , and she wonders what her tiger stripes would look like if they were rotting.

Dick meets her at school the next morning with an easy grin and one of his trademark overly blunt remarks. “Whoa, you look terrible. Fun night?”

“Terrific,” Artemis replies sarcastically, slamming her locker shut. 

“Oooh-kay,” he says, watching her yank on her gloves with a raised eyebrow. “I take it you’d _love_ to talk about it?”

“Exactly,” Artemis says. She rolls her shoulders against the soreness, and waits for him to provide a change of subject.

“Well, M’gann and the others missed you last night,” he says, matter-of-factly. “They faked—“

“Zatanna and I fought a homicidal maniac,” she blurts, surprising herself as much as him.

Dick blinks at her, and leans against the lockers, eyebrows rising. “And that wasn’t totally astrous because…?”

Artemis frowns, knowing she can’t stop now. “He killed his sister. Who was also his soulmate.” 

“Oh.” He grimaces. “Dude, that sucks.”

“Yeah,” she says, and checks off ‘was emotionally vulnerable with someone’ on her list of ‘things Canary keeps telling me to do’. It was even spontaneous. “So what happened at the dance?”

She asks Kaldur what he did for Halloween. It’s definitely just to be polite, and she totally doesn’t actually spend fifteen minutes talking with him about his visit with his mom.

Oliver sets a proud hand on her shoulder after patrol, and her heart beats faster, faster. She doesn’t shake him off.

M’gann’s laughter flickers across the mind-link, and Artemis lets herself smirk and projects encouragement right back at her.

Zatanna says, “Dad?” and the reality comes crashing back in.

Artemis nods, letting Aqualad give them their assignments. He doesn’t need to know that she’s no good with kids.

Robin shoots her a glance, knowing he’ll be patrolling through Gotham. “You want me to che—“

“No,” Artemis says. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Hey, it’s okay to be worried,” he says, reaching out for her and [ _you're strong, you don’t need anybody else_ ] has been her code for so long, because she knows what needing gets you.

“I’m fine,” Artemis tells him, jaw clenching, and twists to dodge his hand. “We’ve got work to do anyway.

“Get traught or get dead, _remember_ , Boy Wonder?” she says, spitting his own words back at him, and watches him draw back, eyes narrowing under his mask.

He nods, gaze now wary, and she is far more willing to be a spitting cobra than a statue of glass, so she takes it as an opportunity to get the _hell_ out of here through the zetas.

They save the day, and Zatanna loses her dad in the process. Artemis watches her crumple to the ground, tears streaming down her face, and can’t bring herself to move any closer.

Eventually, the League shepherds them back to the zeta tubes, and all Artemis can feel is the secondhand sympathy and grief echoing around the mind-link ~~( _soul-bond_ )~~. She’s hollowed out.

She doesn’t care about them.

[ _you’re strong, you don’t need anybody else_ ]

Artemis crawls in through the window, sliding it shut behind her.

“You’re home.”

“Yeah,” she says, turning to face her mom. “Saved the day.”

Her mom looks back at her exhaustedly, tears tracks still written across her face, and Artemis wonders at that. Her mom never cried. Not when five year old Artemis had accidentally shot her with her very first bow, not when sad movies came on tv, not when she learned that her daughter was everything she’d hoped she’d never be. Teared up, maybe, but she never let herself cry.

It’s been a long night for everyone.

She opens her arms for a hug, and Artemis hates herself for wanting it as much as she does. She drops to her knees, and hugs her mom back, ignoring the way the arm of the chair digs into her side almost painfully, the rush of contact leaving her almost light-headed.

“We’re okay,” she mutters, and it’s as much for herself as her mom. “It’s okay.”

Her mom sobs softly, and clings tighter.

Dick doesn’t bother trying to talk to her at school. Artemis is absolutely, definitely happy about that he doesn’t. It’s just a confirmation of what she already knew: that soulmarks mean fuck all, and no one’s going to stay. This just means she won’t get in too deep. 

(She’s already in too deep.)


	7. treading water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Assuming makes an ass out of you and me. Or maybe just has Artemis freaking the fuck out for no reason.

“You’ve been isolating yourself,” Canary says, as though they’re sitting in those damned green chairs all over again.

“And?” Artemis replies, slamming her fists into the heavy bag. “It’s not like they knew me in the first place.” She doesn’t bother denying it. Canary gets annoying when she does things like that.

“You teammates care about you, Artemis. Why are you trying so hard to avoid them?” 

It honestly feels more like a lie than anything she’s ever said when she replies. “I don’t need anybody else.” _I_ can’t _need anybody else._

“If that were true, none of us would be here,” Canary says, and releases the bag, just to prove her point.

Artemis misses her next punch with a gasp, fist flying wild, and barely avoids the bag as it comes flying back in her face, but manages to step back and fix Canary with a glare. 

“Come on, Artemis,” she says, looking back at her with those _stupid_ kind eyes, tucking a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. “Sometimes it isn’t keeping people out that takes strength, it’s letting them in.”

Artemis scowls, and turns to go.

“Hey,” Canary calls at her back, and she freezes. “I’m still here, Artemis, and I’m not going anywhere.”

She steadies her shoulders, and walks away, calling back, “Doesn’t matter.”

Her voice doesn’t shake. It _doesn’t_.

Her birthday present to Wally is telling him M’gann and Conner are dating, the words so venom-sweet they feel like they drip off her lips. She slings her arms over the edge of the couch, watching them just like him. 

“You know she’s dating him, right?” The smirk curling on her lips is barely a performance.

He gives a short “Huh?” of surprise, and she can’t see his face properly but she can see him dropping his fork onto the still-full plate, disappointed. “Wha— _no_.”

“Oh, _yeah_.” She nods, once, swiftly, and slips away, trying to dredge up the satisfaction she’d usually feel when playing this game with him. It doesn’t come.

“Artemis,” Kaldur calls gently, and she doesn’t go stiff. That would be a red flag.

She does, however, turn to face him, letting her lips slide upwards like she’s comfortable with whatever conversation he wants to have. “Yeah?”

The rest of the team is headed for the showers, sweaty and exhausted, and Artemis does not do that here, because that would mean taking her clothes off here, so she was headed for the zetas, sweaty and exhausted, to take one of the short, cold showers than don’t put a stress on her plumbing or her water bill.

“You’ve been… distracted, of late.” His shallow-sea eyes are gentle, so gentle, and she hates it.

“I’m fine,” she says, bristling. Her shoulders come up and her lips go down.

“You have not been acting like you are,” he says, standing his ground. His feet plant themselves, shoulder-width apart like the way he stands when preparing to grab a lake’s worth of water. “Artemis, we are worried for you.”

“We?” She knows the second it comes out of her mouth it’s too much, but she also _knows_ that Canary has been talking about her and that Canary knows exactly who she is and if she’s told them—

“Yes.” Kaldur doesn’t falter, but she sees him take in her response. There’s something he’s watching for, and she doesn’t know what it is but the idea that he _knows_ is clogging her throat with too much panic to reason it out. “I will not be present for our next mission, due to an obligation with my king. I would like to recommend that you, also, make yourself not present for it.”

It feels like a punch to the gut.

She stops talking to Canary.

Zatanna laughs, light and uneven. M’gann pauses to be satisfied with herself, and Artemis resists the urge to roll her eyes, instead leaping into the conversation before Zatanna can notice.

“What are you planning on doing later?” She shuts the door of the pantry, turning to face them. No one notices when she steals a post-mission snack here, but the conversation with Kaldur, days before, pounds at her chest still and she knows she messed up when she sees Zatanna’s face.

“Um.” It’s caught her off-guard, stumbling to figure out why Artemis has changed the direction of the conversation. ( _Stupid. She’s not a mark, you don’t need her confused, dammit, why can’t you just—_ ) “I was gonna do some homework? I know that I’m on the Team properly now, but school’s kinda getting me overwhelmed.”

“I know!” M’gann says brightly. “I never realized it was so much _work_.”

She breathes in slowly, masking it by peeling off the wrapper of the granola bar. They don’t _know_. It’s fine. If she offered to hang out with Zatanna they wouldn’t even think twice. (She kind of wants to hang out with Zatanna.)

“Yeah,” she says, “I’m pretty busy too.”

“I’d love to hang out with you more,” M’gann replies. “I mean, not like I have a lot of friends. If you’re free, we’re doing a kind of Thanksgiving here, and it would be awesome to have someone familiar with Earth food?”

She smiles, wide and white, and Artemis swallows around nothing at all.

Thanksgiving is just her and her mom, both of them pretending that the table doesn’t have an empty space that leaves Artemis’s lungs filled with smoke and the food tasting like ash in her mouth.

She forces a smile at the spread of food. “This is great, Mom. How’d you slip it past me?”

Her mom smirks. “Trust me, it wasn’t easy. You devour everything in sight when you get back from those missions of yours.”

The meal suddenly looks even less appealing.

She thinks of the invitation M’gann had given, smile white and wide and false-not false- _picture perfect_ , and suddenly it takes nothing at all to bite down.

“I am,” her mother says, “very grateful to have such a wonderful daughter.” Strings attached: a good daughter, a daughter at home, a daughter who goes to the fancy private school and doesn't wear gloves and tries to be everything you ask of her and _responds_.

Artemis’s grip clenches around her fork. Nothing. No gloves. She shoves her free hand into the pocket of her jeans. It’s too small for her whole hand, and made worse by the angle, but she can barely breathe for the openness.

“I, uh, I’m thankful to have—“ _a wonderful mother? You out of prison and here? Dad gone? Jade alive?_ “—the kind of opportunities I do,” Artemis finishes lamely, the sentence stumbling out of her. 

She shoves another forkful of green beans in her mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it’s funny b/c m’gann thinks artemis would’ve been part of team grew up with earth thanksgiving when really it wouldve been like  
> zatanna: i got the cranberry sauce!  
> artemis: i thought that was just on tv???????  
> because artemis didn’t have a childhood


	8. a setup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sportsmaster makes his arguments.

“I've got nothing to prove,” Artemis tells herself. “I'm one of a kind.”

She steps through the zeta, and who the hell should be on the other side but Red Arrow.

“Sure,” he says, a smirk she wants to punch off his lips firmly in place. “Team has needed a real archer.”

Bareknuckle. She’d do it bareknuckle.

The night gets no better. Wally and Dad and Jade and Red _fucking_ Speedy. (She swears, she’s going to start calling him that to his face, preppy dickwad.) 

By the time she’s trudging home, hollowed out and sick with some ugly feeling because she screwed up, bad, and [ _this is the right souvenir for the mission_ ] keeps ringing in her ears, she just wants it to be over. (She’d nearly just—reached out and—he would’ve hated her, by the time they got home, real archer or not, soulmate or not.)

Her mother is, as always, waiting up. “Artemis. Is everything…?”

“Fine,” she lies. 

Last night, she’d had adrenaline and stories and enough anger to be pissed when her mom said she _begged_ , but tonight, she barely has one word in her. And then, of course, she opens her bedroom door.

Dad is lounging on her goddamn bed, rolling a bomb between his fingertips and he has the gall to— 

“Shh.” He presses one finger to his mask, mocking. “We wouldn't want to upset your mother.”

Her heart is pounding in her ears. Her eyes flick back to the bomb. He’s not the type to go out like that but she’s pretty sure he’d get Mom before she could— 

“What are you doing here?” Artemis asks, shutting the door behind her.

She spends the next week with his voice ringing in her ears. It always is, though, so it’s not that bad. Just different words now. [ _you’re strong, you don’t need anybody else_ ] has been replaced by [ _you'll never be one of them, you belong with us_ ] and she wonders if he always meant that _else_ to exclude him.

She wonders if he thinks she’ll believe that _us_ has always included Jade.

Especially since both of Jade’s soulmates are fighting for the good guys. (And, God, the image of Red Speedy making out with her sister is not one she ever needed burnt in her brain.)

Santa Prisca. She could do it.

And then Dick says, “I need your help.”

“What?” She feels her eyebrows crawling towards her hairline.

“There’s a mission. Not a Batman mission, just—it’s personal.” He looks nervous and twitchy and she’s never heard him bring this stuff up at school and the lines are blurring between Dick and Robin right in front of her eyes, but she swallows all that back.

“What do you need?” fills right in before she can think too hard about it, and the justification flows up naturally in the aftermath. He’s already done enough for her that this is just paying it back. She could use something to do that doesn’t involve Red Speedy or Oliver’s fucking complex about him.

“There’s a circus. Haly’s. They’re going through a hard time.” His lips purse nervously. “I’m going to run an undercover, pretend I have B’s okay. Just… roll with it?”

She nods. “I’ll walk you to class.”

His eyes light up.

“So you can explain more.”

“Right.” He smirks.

It is, of course, then that Bette arrives to look between the two of them like their relationship is a fascinating enigma (and Artemis has learned that she’s surprisingly okay with being a main object of gossip over the past two months) and Dick’s smile goes camera-ready.

“Hey, Bette!” He turns to her easily, reaching to steal one of her fries.

She bats his hand away, and if Artemis didn’t know that it was some weird rich kid shared-cousin thing, they’d be the enigma.

“I was just inviting Artemis here to come hang over winter break,” he tells her, and she starts glaring at the side of his head.

“Oh?” Bette gives Artemis a Look.

Artemis grits her teeth and nods. “Yeah. Just trying that whole… ‘getting to know each other’ thing.”

Invoking the slight awkwardness and pity that Bette feels whenever Artemis’s aversion to her soul marks comes up is a tactic she doesn’t like, because she doesn’t need _pity_ , thank you very much, but it’s one that works, and it always presents itself through her swiftly moving the subject on, so there. Excuses made. Conversation over.

Of course, Dick’s grin widens to shit-eating and he says, “Yeah, I’m inviting Roy too.” Then, in a stage whisper, as Artemis’s blood runs cold, “He’s dating her sister.”

“You have a sister?”

Oh, yeah, Artemis is going to murder him.

His little joke turns into a prophetic statement when Red Arrow invites himself along, making nasty comments about mole suspects and overall just pissing everyone off. 

“You've got the mission covered…” he says, “but who's covering the three potential mole suspects you're bringing along?”

Honestly, he could at least try to pretend he liked them. Might make his job easier. Instead, Conner’s glaring at him, M’gann’s on edge, and Artemis is utterly unwilling to trust him in the field.

“Uh, sure, I guess,” Robin says. His lips tighten in a way that says he doesn’t like it, though. “How much did you hear of the briefing?”

“Circus, break-ins, Europe. Don’t you have school?” His arms cross, stupid and cocky. He and Jade really are suited to each other. (And, ahh, sister-kissing in the brain, _ugh_.)

“It’s called winter break,” she snaps.

“Which also gives us a time frame for this,” Robin adds, much more calmly, shooting a finger gun towards Conner and M’gann. “Happy Harbor starts up again on the fourth.”

He turns back towards the holo-screens. “Now, we were set up as the Daring Dangers, but I’m guessing we’ll have to add on a fifth sibling for Roy. How do you feel about the name Dick?”

She barely restrains a snort.

Red Arrow scowls. “No.”

“What?” he replies, all innocence. “Their names are alliterative: Dean, Dan, Dawn, Diane…”

“I am not,” Red Arrow says, low and angry, “calling myself _Dick_.”

Artemis smirks. “I don’t see your problem, Arrow. Seems like a decent name to me.”

“No.”

“Why don’t we come back to it?” M’gann suggests, glancing between the three of them.

“Isn’t it short for Richard anyway?” Conner adds, unamused.

“Okay, okay,” Dick says. “We have costumes and ‘mark suppressants all ready to go, though I’ll have to do a little bit of prep to get a new member settled in. Our meetup with Pop Haly is tomorrow, so we’ll have to get working to get the routine down by then…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know, i was really excited for insecurity, and then there was barely any divergence and it was like, three hundred words and i ended up realizing it’s b/c canon!artemis’s lowest point is just quick healing!artemis’s normal.
> 
> i feel like now is the time to mention the title of the gdoc for this fic was “In Which the Author Intensifies Artemis’s Trauma and Calls it a Fic: The Fic”


	9. absolutely no fucking symbolism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Artemis takes a walk in the shoes of someone without quite so many issues, and decides she’s kind of tired of being so screwed up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we have reached our final chapter with the events of performance.  
> There’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss it abuse ref in this chapter, btw

Being Diane Danger, much as Artemis would never admit it, is kind of cool.

Diane Danger walks around with her arms and hands and shoulders bare and doesn’t worry about a thing, because her only marks are carefully painted patterns of gold and blue and red and white, and if anyone were to touch her she’s so high on suppressants that not a thing would happen.

Diane Danger has only ever shot for show, and would probably be kind of horrified by the sight of blood, much less the idea of hurting someone.

Diane Danger doesn’t have any family except the people beside her, and she isn’t running from them or afraid of them or angry with them, and even if she were it wouldn’t be anything like the Crock family’s dysfunction.

Not that Artemis gets the chance to lose herself in her. Or that she’d want to, really. She kind of likes being a superhero.

“So why didn’t you bring Wally?” she murmurs, watching Conner throw up barrel after barrel, practicing getting the arc right for Roy. He’ll have her tuned out. M’gann is doing the practical part of their homework right now, so his mind is busy with calculus or American history or whatever. “And don’t give me some bullshit about Kid ‘Crash’ not fitting the group.”

Dick leans back against the crate, tossing a beanbag up and down as he watches them too. “His parents would never let him miss Christmas.”

“And…?” She tilts her head to get a better view in her peripherals. He’s frowning.

“ _And_ he knows enough about me to ask questions like these,” he admits. The beanbag crashes against his palm, insides shifting against themselves.

“You and the circus have a history,” she states, looking back to where Roy is shooting. 

He has three arrows nocked, but his grip is different than the one she’d been taught for it. She wonders where he learned. He’s certainly a better archer than Oliver, in terms of form.

“We were the Flying Graysons,” Dick tells her. 

Roy looses his bow.

“And you don’t want anyone telling you they’re crooked without giving a shot at proving they’re not.”

“Exactly.” The beanbag thuds down again.

She shoots another glance at him. His face is pensive, eyes straight ahead. She lets herself slide closer. It won’t be the comfort of soulmate contact, not with them both on suppressants like this, but—

Her bare arm brushes his, and she fixes her gaze straight ahead too, ignoring the jolt of contact and the way Dick twitches in surprise. 

A moment later, he leans in, and it takes everything in her power not to run screaming or melt on the spot, suddenly pressed against him from shoulder to hip.

Roy grabs Dick by the shoulders the second they’re behind the curtain, pulling him loose from M’gann and running his eyes down his body like that will be more assurance he’s alive than the way that he finished the show.

She pushes a hint of gratitude out towards M’gann, who turns to flash her a smile, still hovering to take Dick’s weight again.

“ _Jesus_ , kid,” Roy hisses, and she’s heard some of the other acts muttering about how they don’t look alike, but he’s damn well acting like an overprotective big brother right now.

“Come on, _Mom_ ,” she says, grabbing his arm (and firmly ignoring the lack of barriers between them) to drag him out of the way. She exaggerates an eye roll for a passing stevedore. 

He flashes a smile back as someone behind her chokes on a laugh.

 _Where are we headed tonight?_ Roy asks, embarrassment hissing through the mind-link like water from a cracked pipe.

He doesn’t stay tolerable, overprotective Roy, of course. Soon enough, he’s suspicious asshole Red Arrow, and she’s so tired of being angry with him, of this whole cycle of bullshit.

So she meets his eyes, and she says, “None of us are perfect. But each of us would give our lives for this team. So try to keep an open mind.”

He doesn’t get it, but it means something, that it’s Artemis who grabs his shoulder, and not Diane Danger. He doesn’t get anything, but she’s starting to think it might be worth it to give him a chance.

Weirdly enough, by the end of the mission, he’s doing the same.

They don’t bother sticking around after the last performance, just grab their things and disappear into the city, dressed in civvies and headed for the zeta.

Dick keeps up a steady conversation with her in French—their accents are radically different, but Vietnamese French isn’t all that far from the ‘standard,’ so it’s easy enough to understand him. Conner interjects about as often as he usually does in English conversation.

They talk about normal, touristy things, and she still feels like Diane Danger, for this one, last night, even with Roy muttering confusedly in the mind-link every other sentence because _his_ French barely passes for conversational, making it impossible to pretend to be the normal girl. M’gann shivers, as though it isn’t far warmer than her homeworld, and Conner strips off his jacket to wrap around her shoulders, and Artemis feels lighter than air. 

They turn the last corner, and Dick waves then into an alleyway with a quick, “Nous allons par ici.” 

_We’re going this way_ , Roy echoes in the mind-link.

 _Oh_ , she teases, _Proud you actually know the answer for once?_

M’gann’s laughter is the last thing she hears before the roar of the zeta overtakes her, and she’s re-solidifying in Gotham. She wonders how exactly the ‘Batman’ excuse is going to hold up when Roy starts asking questions about debriefing.

A smirk on her lips, she lets herself out of the phone booth, breathing in the utterly and completely un-fresh air of her home. Dawn is breaking, red and yellow and ugly in the Gotham sky, and she refuses to recognize any form of symbolism to that.

The snow in the alley is already packed down and blackened with dirt and dust and ash, and so her footsteps don’t crunch as she heads out, returning home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments/kudos welcome and, while this is functionally a standalone fic, I would encourage you to read “leave a piece of yourself right here (remind me that you came)” (the other fic in this series) if you haven’t already!


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